This invention relates to stone laminated panels.
Some decorative stone laminated panels, for example, lightweight marble paneling available from Stone Panels Incorporated of Texas, consist of a thin stone slab (e.g. 1 cm thick) glued onto an aluminum honeycomb backing (e.g. 2 cm thick).
Thin laminated stone paneling is typically made with a cutting machine designed for squaring off large marble blocks, for example, the Diamantfil DF 2000 model, available from Pellegrini Corporation in Verona, Italy.
Originally, stone cutting machines were designed to cut marble blocks a meter or two on each side using a loop of diamond impregnated wire supported by two aligned pulleys, each about 2.5 meters in diameter. The section of wire between the two pulleys is held horizontally under a high tension adjusted by a 4.5 m long lever arm. The pulleys are lowered to bring the wire into contact with an upper surface of a stationary marble block. As the pulleys rotate and continue to move down, the wire abrades the marble, making a vertical cut across the full width of the block and eventually down through the full height of the block.
When used in making thin laminated stone panels, the block cutting machine produces two stone panels from a sandwich consisting of a thin marble slab (e.g. 3 cm thick) with an aluminum honeycomb (e.g. 2 cm thick) glued on each flat surface of the slab. For cutting, the sandwich is mounted upright on one of its edges, with the opposite edge of the slab held parallel to and directly underneath the horizontal diamond wire and the honeycombs aligned with and on either side of the wire. As the wire is lowered onto the slab with the pulleys rotating, the sandwich is sliced into two marble laminated panels, each having an approximately 1.0 cm thick marble slab glued to an aluminum honeycomb backing.
Other marble block cutting machines available from Pellegrini, for example the RW 1600, move a marble block against a loop of wire supported by two pulleys each with a rotatable axis. The pulleys can be adjusted to hold the loop of wire at a variety of angles to produce an inclined cut against the side of the marble block. The Space Wire, also available from Pellegrini, supports marble blocks on a rotating table. Pulleys holding the loop of wire are mounted on a lever arm that positions the wire against the marble block over a range of angles.
Other machines (available as the "Scoppiatrice orrizontale" from Socomac in Verona, Italy; and the LT 4D/460 and LT 6D/600 from Levi Tunisi in Milan, Italy) have two horizontal disk saws arranged to split a flat slab into two thinner slabs. A horizontal cut is made along the slab as it is moved against the disk saws by a conveyor belt supporting the slab. A metal sheet inserted into the cut prevents an upper portion of the cut slab from collapsing onto a lower portion. The machines are able to cut slabs with a width no larger than 60 cm (at a typical 3 cm thickness).
Large thin slabs may also be split in two while held vertically in a machine described by Bourke (U.S. Pat. No. 4,436,078). The slabs are held upright by suction cups on a table which moves the slabs against a large, vertical disk saw which cuts through half the height of each slab. Each slab is then flipped to allow the saw to cut the other way through the slab and thus split the slab in two.